Overivew
The Maryland Community Solar pilot has been running for 7 years and culminates in 2024. The program incetivizes developers to provide serivces to LMI customers. LMI qualification is defined for both the Low and Moderate income portions:
- Low income means a subscriber whose gross annual household income is at or below 175 percent of the federal poverty level for the year of subscription or who is certified as eligible for any federal, state, or local assistance program that limits participation to households whose income is at or below 175 percent of the federal poverty limit.
- Moderate income means a subscriber whose gross annual household income is at or below 80 percent of the median income for Maryland for the year of subscription.
Utility Map
We consider five utilities in Maryland:
- Baltimore Gas and Electric
- Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative
- Delmarva Power
- Potomac Electric (Pepco)
- Potomac Edison
The map shows the distribution of five utilities coverage across the state.
The table below shows each of the five utilities in Maryland and the respective demographic data attribute, including population, households and data representing Low and Moderate income distributions. The largest utility in the state in terms of population and households is BGE. In terms of low and moderate income concentrations, BGE and Delmarva hold the highest concentration of the respective populations.
Geoqualification
Geoqualification is only available for Low income, which removes the Moderate income portion. We calculate the number of households living at or below 175 percent of the federal poverty line in Maryland, and tag the number of households to each of the Maryland utilities. This represents the ‘Low Income’ layer in the map below.
To estimate the potential population qualified as LMI in Maryland, we calculate the number of households living at or below 80% AMI. This layer is added as ‘Moderate Income’.